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Cloning your stock ECU
Before you do any tuning, it's a good idea to make a clone of your ECU. This way you will always have your own ecu available if you mess things up. You will need to have galletto, a vag com cable, a 12v power source, some wires to connect your ecu, preferably some soldering tools, a little pushbutton, and some other misc. tools. Start with removing your ECU from your car. To do this you will need a ECU key (Volvo part nr. 9995722). You can also tear down the ecu box, and get creative with some screwdrivers, or fabricate your own tool. Now comes the part of cloning that's the most risky. You have to download the current software from your ecu. Please follow the instructions carefully, and double check everything you do. It's all on you own risk ofc. If you screw up you ecu, you will have to either get it recovered by a tuner, or get a reload at the dealer at potentially great expense. So be careful! If you're careful about it's perfectly doable though. If you're really uncertain about it, ask someone more skilled than yourself, but make sure you both understand the risks. The upside is that after this is done, you wont have to worry about messing up your ecu anymore, and you can modify your clone to your hearts content. Open up your ECU by removing all the screws, and lift out the pcb. In order to get the required software (bin & immo) off of the ecu you will have to put it in boot mode. This can be done by grounding a specific pad before applying power to the ecu, and releasing it again after a sec or two. The pad is located just above the infineon microcontroller. In earlier ecu's there are four pads there, in later versions there may be a few missing. As far as I know though the left most pad (which is the bootmode pad) is always there. To avoid any mishaps, I tend to temporarily solder a wire to this pad to do this with, like depicted below (click on the pic to get the larger version): Put the ECU on a non-conducting surface, and make sure there is nothing metallic touching it before wiring it up like this (you only need the k-line, +12v, and ground connections, ignore the can connections): The k-line needs to go to the vag-com cable, which also requires power. Wire it up like so (caution this is the female side of the connector!, mirror it for the vag com cable!): Open up Galetto, and set Manufacturer to Audi (yes Audi, not Volvo). If you have a my 99 vehicle it probably has a 512k bin. In that case set the ECU to "AUDI VW ME 7.x.x 29F400BB (ground eprom pin 24)". If you have a my 2000+ vehicle, set it to "AUDI VW ME7.x.x 29F800BB (ground eprom pin 24)", to retrieve your 1mb bin. If you are not sure, use 800BB, and ask someone to check the result for you. Press read. A warning will pop up, basically telling you to ground pin 24 to put your ecu into bootmode. In stead of pin 24, we can use the aforementioned wire soldered to the bootmode pad. Connect it to ground, then apply power to the ecu, and then disconnect the wire from ground again. You should now be in bootmode, so click ok to retrieve your bin. disconnect the ecu from power when it's done. When it's done retrieving your bin, you have to copy the contents of your immo eeprom chip. To do this you will need Argdub's me7 EEPROM programmer tool. You can get the gui version off of nefmoto here . Download it and open it up by runnning me7gui.exe. (If it wont work correctly, try running it as admin). Again there is some variation depending on the modelyear of your vehicle. A table probably has to be created with settings for different setups. Up to my2001 the following should work: * Bootmode (of course) * chip: 95040 * baud rate: 10400 * ME7 version: 1.31 * set com port to vag com cable Choose a filename, put the ecu in bootmode again and Click "DO IT!", to retrieve the eeprom contents. For later ecu's, put the ME7 version to 1.4. You may have to experiment with the CSpin settings to make it work. You've now retrieved the required files from your original ecu, so you can make as many clones as you want. Don't put it together yet, but put it somewhere safe while you prepare your new ecu. Open up your new ecu, and solder a wire to the bootmode pad again. This time solder on the pushbutton, and connect the other side to a ground pin inside the ecu, a bit like this: You can drill a little hole through the cover for the switch, and close the ecu up again (ignore those other 2 wires coming from the ecu): Now you just have to push the button before applying power to put it into bootmode, which is a bit more convenient if you want to flash a bit more often. At least until a can flashing method is figured out. Connect the ecu and vag com up again in the same manner as before. Open up galetto, and set it up like before as well. This time you need to make sure you have the right setting (400BB for 512kb or 800BB for 1 mb) so if you're not sure, ask on volvospeed. Open up your bin and click on 'write'. A dialog will pop up again, asking you to put the ecu in bootmode again. Press and hold the pushbutton, while applying power. Let go after a sec or 2. Press ok, and wait for it to finish writing. Disconnect the power if it's done. Now there's only one more thing to do before your clone is done. Open up the eeprom programmer tool again, abd select the eeprom file you copied off your ecu earlier. Put it to the same settings as before, but select 'write' this time. Put the ecu into bootmode again, and press 'do it!'. Hopefully all went well, and you've ended up with a clone of your stock ecu. So go put it in your car and try it out! If it starts, make sure to restart the car before driving anywhere. It sometimes wont restart if something is not right, which can be a nasty surprise. In a pinch, just pull the ecu out for a few sec if that happens. If it all works like expected, remove the wire from your original ECU and put it back together. You can keep it in the car as a backup if you want.